'Intellectual Rot': Dr. Phil Excoriates Universities for 'Endorsing' Pro-Hamas Student Groups

TV personality Phillip McGraw — known professionally as “Dr. Phil” — is condemning the “intellectual rot” he sees invading institutions of higher education as college campuses around the country are teeming with pro-Hamas students in the wake of the terrorist group’s deadly attack on Israel in early October.

“The Hamas invaders were not soldiers; they were assassins,” McGraw said in a video posted to X. “The Hamas charter calls for the ultimate annihilation of all Israeli Jews, followed by the annihilation of Jews around the world. Sound familiar? Sadly, some people — including some right here in America — actually celebrated the slaughter and blame those being murdered, raped, and kidnapped.”

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He went on to assert that “many of America’s most respected elite universities are not only indulging but actually endorsing sanctioned student organizations holding celebrations for the murders.”

The reactions to the students embracing Hamas, McGraw said, reveals a “disturbing degree of ivy-covered intellectual rot” at some of the country’s top-tier universities.

“Americans nationwide have been appalled and shocked,” explained the best-selling author and show host. “The leadership of these supposedly highly sophisticated schools are so busy virtue signaling and coddling students who think that words are violence but [actual physical] violence — horrific, inhumane violence — is social justice, that they have forgotten it is their job to teach their students to think and to test reality.”

“Instead of training tomorrow’s leaders,” he added, “they are profoundly demagnetizing our culture’s moral compass among the college population.”

McGraw, 73, went on to note he is no expert in geopolitics but made clear during his impassioned, five-minute monologue that he doesn’t need to be one to clearly see Hamas’ attack against the Jewish state as “utterly sick, twisted, disgusting, and inexcusable.”

“Have some of these people gotten together and collectively lost their minds?” he asked rhetorically. “We know right from wrong, and we must stand up for what we believe and know is right. We must call out these institutions. How is any of this acceptable to anyone? How is it not recognized as incredibly racist? How do elite educators not recognize this is a huge teachable moment in the students’ journey?”

The TV personality encouraged the heads of universities to tell their pro-Hamas students “we don’t celebrate racism, antisemitism, baby killing, and murdering,” referring to the acts carried out by the terror group governing the Gaza Strip.

“Israel is our friend and ally,” said McGraw. “They don’t need us to just be their friend in good times. They need us to be their friend in bad times, to be their friend when it is easier not to be. Good friends are the ones coming in the door when everyone else is going out. This is a really great time to show Israel — and the world — who we are.”

Similarly, HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher recently rebuked those on the left who have been supporting Hamas, saying on a recent episode of his own show, “It’s just amazing to me that the American left — so much of it — throws their lot in with people whose values I hope they don’t share.”

“[B]y the way, if the Israelis did get rid of Hamas, they’d be doing a giant favor to the people of Gaza, who hate Hamas, too,” he said. “Religious tolerance: that doesn’t exist in Gaza. You’re either a Muslim or an infidel, and you’d better be a Muslim. Female freedom. Free and fair elections. Free speech. Gay rights.”

The president of Colorado Christian University, Dr. Donald Sweeting, is also speaking out against Ivy League students supporting Hamas, even offering his view on why young Americans have been duped into supporting the terrorist organization.

“We’re seeing this in university campuses around the country,” he told CBN Digital. “There’s this celebration of Hamas on the one hand, and then the administrators are quiet about it. The [college] presidents generally aren’t speaking out about it. And this, to me, it’s unconscionable, but it also reveals that we’ve been teaching stuff and promoting things in the universities that are bearing a bitter fruit.”

Part of the problem, he continued, is that academic institutions have turned from secular liberalism to a “neo-Marxist worldview” dividing the world into two segments: victims of oppression and oppressors.

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